Newegg Gives You A 'Free' Monitor If You Buy Their Overpriced Graphics Cards

You've probably heard this one by now: there's a serious shortage of Nvidia and Radeon GPUs on the market, with prices inflated to such unbearable levels that it's cheaper to buy a PC off the shelf than it is to build one yourself. But hey, if buying a shiny new graphics card and scoring a free PC monitor sounds like your idea of a bargain, then online retailer Newegg has some extra special deals for you. I say "special" because on one particular bundle you'll be forking over $130 more than the suggested MSRP for the monitor and the graphics card combined.

Thanks to Paul Lilly at HotHardware spotting this today, I spent a minute going through the various bundles, most of which (scroll to the last one if you want to be shocked) include a free 1080p monitor with the purchase of a Radeon RX 570 or Radeon RX 580. Lilly did note that one particular bundle offered up a Gigabyte GTX 1060 and a Gigabyte Z370 Auros motherboard for a somewhat reasonable (if still overinflated) price, but hours later it's sold out. The only remaining bundles I can find focus on Radeon RX 500 and RX Vega GPUs, so let's see if what Newegg is offering can be considered tempting or laughable.

Sapphire Radeon NITRO+ RX 580 4GB

For $499, you can take home Sapphire's Nitro+ RX 580 4GB, which is admittedly a terrific card -- for its launch price of $200. Add it to your cart and Newegg will gift you a 27" HP 270 1080p LCD monitor with some adequate specs like 1ms response rate and 300 Nit brightness. No FreeSync though. The monitor is valued at $169.99. If you wanted to buy these products separately at MSRP, you'd pay a grand total of $370 plus some shipping costs. Newegg, however, would like to "give" you the monitor and ask for $130 above that.

PowerColor RED DEVIL Radeon RX 580 8GB

Next up is the PowerColor RED DEVIL RX 580 8GB, which launched at a suggested retail price of $250. If you give Newegg $539, however, they'll throw in a 23" ASUS monitor which does boast a 1080p IPS panel, but also carries a 5ms response rate. Not a dealbreaker certainly, but nothing that would compel me to punch that "add to cart" button. If it had FreeSync or was a bit larger? Maybe, because I understand these GPU prices aren't dropping anytime soon. But seriously, doing the math on this one just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. The ASUS monitor is valued at $149. So you'll be paying $140 more than the MSRP of both these products to get one of them for "free."

PowerColor RED DEVIL Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB

When "Free" is a 4 letter word.Newegg

This is where things just get egregious. I can't find any sane way to sugar-coat this. This bundle includes the above card which is an absolute beast in terms of performance and power draw. It originally hit the market at about $699 -- $200 more than the reference RX Vega 64 launched at. Here, Newegg is doing something different and admittedly more valuable. They're tossing in a Thunderbolt 3-powered PowerColor eGFX (external GPU enclosure) valued at $329. To be fair, it's an attractive enclosure and more affordable than Razer's solution. But if we add up those MSRPs again, we're looking at $1028. Newegg's price for this bundle? A bank account-destroying $1399.

Tempting Deals or Laughable Price Gouging?

I've had a difficult time forming a fair, balanced opinion on this. On the one hand, this feels like a move against crypto miners by bundling in products that a gamer might want when building or upgrading an aging PC. Applause for that! On the other hand, I expect nothing less than for miners to snatch up these bundles and sell the unwanted gift on eBay (like this Gigabyte Auros board). Because honestly, they aren't appealing to gamers. The monitors on offer are average, and the market for external GPU enclosures is miniscule.

Like I said earlier, this just can't be sugar-coated. Newegg and every other retailer around the world are price gouging, and offering outdated monitors as an olive branch won't encourage informed gamers to make that purchase right now. Uninformed consumers? Possibly.

Even if stock is low, the only right move is to decrease prices and hope that both Nvidia and AMD can spin up production as fast as possible to meet surging demands. I could be wrong, and I'd love to hear your opinions about this.